Hallstatt resident Friedrich Idam, 62, said the locals had felt the need to protest against an “avalanche” of mass tourism.
“Hallstatt no longer lives on tourism, it is being squashed by overcrowding,” he said.
This Alpine idyll is just one of many overcrowded, photogenic sites across Europe where tensions between locals and tourists have risen to boiling point.
“There is always an assumption that this only happens in Venice or Barcelona, but it’s not the case, you will see this around the world,” said Xavier Font, an expert in tourism and sustainability at the University of Surrey in the southwest of England.
“This group of people in Austria have just become organized and are saying ‘enough.’ And they are right to say it. In some parts of the world, people are poor and have to put up with it.”
Hallstatt was featured on a Korean television show in 2006, triggering a wave of hype on social media. Town officials say that tourists from 87 nations have been registered as visitors this year already, including many from the United States.
U.S. tourists tend to stay overnight, while others are more likely to visit on a day trip, residents said.
July 14, 202303:15
As for the supposed links to Disney’s “Frozen,” despite the valley’s uncanny resemblance to the scenery of the movie, the filmmakers in fact modeled their fictional kingdom on Norway. Its plot is based on “The Snow Queen,” by Danish fairytale writer Hans Christian Andersen.
The picturesque town became so popular among Chinese tourists that a Chinese company built a full-size replica of the Austrian town in faraway Guangdong province in 2012, reportedly costing $940 million.
However, the Hallstatt tourism board says on its English-language website: “But only in the original will you discover this truly unique culture with such a history all in a breath-taking mountain setting.” It’s an invitation to foreign visitors that local officials are now trying to restrict.
After tour operators were forced to book dedicated slots before arriving with tourist buses, activists are now also calling for a limit on the numbers of private vehicles and tourists per day.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
